Tied that way, I found the least uncomfortable position was to lie sideways. Not that comfort was at the top of my mind. But it did minimize the pressure on my knees and elbows.
I had been trapped in this position since two masked men carried me from the hotel room on the fifth floor. I was sure there were cameras on the elevator, which they used to carry me down. I could not see with my eyes duct taped, so I was not sure if it was the service elevator or the regular elevator. These guys were not too bright. Could they not have used the stairs to avoid detection? Or perhaps they had overpowered and tied up the security personnel, maybe even killed them, although it was difficult to see why that was necessary. Or my captors could simply have bribed them. After all, as you know, bribery was not exactly a rare thing in China.
This position they had bound me was professional, something they could not have learned watching television or the movies. They ordered me to kneel, face against the wall, with my wrists crossed behind. I heard someone rip out some electrical cord. I tilted my head and saw from the corner of my eye it was a white telephone cord, the part that connected the telephone to the wall.
Bad news, telephone cords were tough, made to withstand at least 140 pounds of pressure. I knew that for a fact because I once used a telephone cord to escape from the third floor balcony of a man I had just killed. I remembered he was 300 pounds of pure fat. I sat on him and gave him the best sex of his life before strangling him with my bare hands. Seeing the life ooze out of that child rapist, second by second, face blue, body twitching, eyes humbled by the realization of death at the hands of a woman, it was worth letting his filthy fingers and tongue wander every inch of my body. Not to mention the $100,000 paid by an anonymous philanthropist.
As I was saying, they ripped out the telephone cord, thin enough to slice through my skin and draw blood, but strong enough to secure my wrists behind. The knot on my wrists gave me no doubt this was not their first rodeo. As long as the free end was in a closed fist or tied to a fixed object like a hook, the more I would struggle, the tighter it would have felt.
While one man held the free end of the cord, the other gripped and pulled both my ankles. His grip on one of my ankles was not that tight. Perhaps he thought he was simply dealing with a bitch. I could have easily freed one leg and kicked him hard in the face, hard enough to knock him out. With one man out, I could have pushed back against the surprised second man, spun around and kneed him in the crotch. When he bent over, my knee could have met his open face, breaking the nose and drawing blood. Even if he was still conscious after that, his grip on the cord would loosen. I would have been able to move my tied wrists to the front and untangle the knot with my teeth. It would have taken just five seconds, which was my average during training.
I could also have screamed at the top of my voice. The hotel walls were thin and surely somebody would have called 9-1-1. They did not point a gun at me or press a knife against my almost naked body, clad only in a black bra and G-string that slid behind my muscled crack.
But I did not do anything like that. Instead of using weapons on me, they had a gun pointed at Adam's temple. He was on the other side of the king sized bed, too far away for any possible action to save him. His lips had been duct taped. I could see his jaw movements behind the tape. His muffled and shaky voice said he was sorry.
It was really not his fault. There was nothing he could have done. In my shower, I had heard the metallic door bell and the faint voice of room service. What a sweet man, I thought. How could Adam have known that I was a big believer in breakfast? Compliments of the hotel, I heard. The thick carpet made it hard to know that two men had entered. Eager to see what was for breakfast, I stepped out of the glass shower and used the hotel dryer on my blonde hair. I enjoyed the tingle on my shoulders as the static charged ends of my hair touched them. The sound of the dryer drawn out the activity outside my locked bathroom door.
I turned the cups of the bra to my back and wrap the back strap around me, with the back hooks in front of my navel. After I hooked the catch, one hook at a time, I twisted the bra around, pulled it up to cover my baseball sized racks, then slipped my arms through the straps. If I wore it like most girls do, arms through the straps first, front cups to my breasts, I could never properly secure the bra hooks behind me. I had to always do it this way.
By the time I maneuvered to put on my tight push-up bra, the steam on the mirror had cleared. I adjusted the bra and squeezed my breasts together, happy the tight bra had made me one size bigger and created a sizeable cleavage, the light from the shower lamp casting a satisfying shadow.
In contrast to the bra, the matching black G-string was a breeze to put on. I slid it up my thighs and pulled hard on the side strings until they rode above my hip bones. I turned ninety degrees to check that the Y shape was imprinted on my butt. I pulled on my sides harder until the base of the Y disappeared into my ass. Later, I had planned to put on low-riding denim shorts, wearing it in such a way the top part of the Y would be visible. I hoped Adam liked the slutty look.
When I stepped out of the shower room, I saw rightaway that they had Adam. At that point, I was not sure whether he or I was the target. Both men were with him and it was only when I emerged that one of them approached. He was unarmed, cocksure that we were a romantic couple and he could make me submit as long as a gun was pointed at Adam. I wondered how the kidnappers could be so sure.
Where did I stop? Oh yes, they had my wrists already secured behind my back, on my knees. My legs were pulled, my knees scraping against the carpet. I was forced to my stomach, ordered to press my face down. I felt my stronger right leg folded at the knees, the right ankle forced into the back of my left knee. Then the left leg was forced back until it trapped my right ankle. My left ankle was forced back some more until it hooked against my tied wrists. When he let go of my left ankle, the tension of the wedged right ankle caused the entire left leg to spring forth, pulling my bound arms backwards and twisting the shoulder sockets. My own body was made to torture itself.
Secured that way, the man with the gun approached. Open your whore mouth, I was ordered. The gun was jammed inside, jerked side to side and clattered on my teeth. Wider, he ordered. He had the other hand twisted inside my hair. I could no longer see Adam. He must be scared shitless, I thought. Both men were with me, the only gun in my mouth and he could have attempted something had he been trained. Alas, I was the only trained agent in the room and I have been expertly and uniquely shackled.
More pressure was to be applied to my joints and muscles, which were beginning to quiver. My left ankle was tied to the wrists, the cord looping around my toes for extra security. Another telephone cord was removed, this time from the bathroom. Damn, why did anyone need two phones in one hotel room? The second cord was used to tie my elbows together.
Finally, they duct taped my mouth and then my eyes.
Blinded, gagged and shackled, I was carried by the armpits and dumped into the trunk. Judging by the quiet but bold hum of the engine, I guessed I must be in the trunk of a BMW. I landed on my back, my own weight crushing wrists and ankles, the restraints biting. Recovering from the shock, I slowly rotated to my left, my bare shoulders scraping against plastic and metal.
I remained calm, breathing deeply through my nose. I tried to arch my back to make it easier to breathe. Taking a deep breath, I strained my toned muscle groups on my thighs, calves, shoulders and arms. The combined effort resulted in barely any movement, marginally improving my lung position. Giving up, I decided to save my energy for what was to come.
Ten minutes later, my left shoulder and upper arm had gone to sleep. I had to burn scarce resources to flip to my stomach, then to the right. Just as I was twisting inside the tight confines of the trunk, the car negotiated a few tight turns, my head and knees alternately hitting the sides. Worse, my bare back caught something sharp, breaking the skin. I felt a stream of warm fluid diagonally crossing my back. The throbbing emanating from the shoulder blade left no doubt the cut had drawn blood.
I blocked out everything and focused on her options. Very soon, my situation would either stay the same or get worse. The bad news was that my cover had been blown. At the very least, they knew I was not the business executive I claimed to be, in Hong Kong for a two year assignment.
The cover had been carefully set up following the usual procedures. My business cards, bilingual in English and Chinese, had stated my position as the Director of Operations for a manufacturing company based in Florida. With a degree in engineering, I knew enough about factories to converse effortlessly with the men and women in business seminars and hotel bars. I drove to work between eight to eight-thirty five days a week, fighting through the rush hour traffic and diving into the cross harbor tunnel from Kowloon to Hong Kong.
Like every Hong Kong resident during the rush hour, I would park my car in a basement parking lot. And like every business person, I would be glued to the cell phone while walking from the car to the elevator. But unlike everyone else, the elevator, which was hidden behind a utility door, took me down instead of up.
Once in the windowless office deep below the streets of Hong Kong, I hid my blonde hair, covered it with a jet black wig, removed the business suit, slipped into jeans and T-shirt, and replaced my heels with Nike sneakers. The transformation was completed by removing all makeup and wearing brown contact lens, my face hidden behind a baseball cap. Emerging from the cargo area at the back of the office building, I pushed a cart carrying soft drinks through the narrow and muggy streets of the business district, the morning sun in my eyes.
Each day, around noon, the sun directly overhead, Steve Wong and his lunch companions would emerge from his office near the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai, waiting a few seconds at the sidewalk for his limo. Each day, I would adjust the baseball cap, snapping digital pictures with the tiny hidden camera, instantly uploading them to a server in Delray Beach, Florida. Within minutes, face recognition software would compare the lunch companions with records stored in giant databases around the world. By 1:00 p.m., a report would be printed, waiting for me in the secured office.
Not a man to waste time, Wong used his lunch hour strategically. He lunched with all the movers and shakers of Hong Kong, including major politicians, powerful heads of the banking and finance establishment, chief executives of property corporations and shipping companies. Wong himself ran the fifth largest cellphone network in Hong Kong. But everyone knew he had a more powerful position. Wong was also the undisputed dragon head of one of the major triads in Hong Kong. It was rumored, but never proven, that the Wong triad was involved in extortion, drugs, gambling, and prostitution, the Big Four staples of all the triads in Hong Kong.
If the triad had simply been involved in the Big Four, there would be no reason for the agency to be involved. But email surveillance had revealed that the Wong triad could be involved in money laundering for known terrorist groups. I was picked for this mission because my Mandarin and Cantonese were at a native level, having been brought up by missionary parents in China's Guangdong province until eighteen. Thereafter, I had attended the Georgia Institute of Technology, graduating second in my engineering class. The agency did not take long to decide to send me. They simply did not have anyone else with my experience and background.
